Drilling holes into plastered brick walls

[Jurek]

I was curious about what was considered a good brand for drill bits, and found this video on YouTube, comparing masonry bits. Project Farm does a lot of these sort of comparison videos on tools and workshop consumables, and generally do a reasonable job. The main problem is that it's a USA channel, so sometimes the brands they mention do not exist in the UK, or are excessively expensive compared to the USA (due to rarity and postage).

It's interesting to see, that ultimately he found the Irwin, Diablo ,Milwaukee, and Bosch parts to be the best. A little surprisingly, the DeWalt bits didn't do very well at all (so of course I've got a few of those!)

You can find all of those 4 brands available for delivery to the UK, but the Diablo are harder to find, relatively expensive due to delivery, and often only available in imperial dimensions not metric.

Bosch are probably the easiest to find (not surprisingly), and a cursory search suggests they're not noticeably more expensive than the others, and sometimes possibly cheaper! Since many in this thread have highlighted Bosch, I think in future I'll aim to use their bits.

My bold
When I was still working for the Museum, we considered De Walt power tools as 'one-way' tools when we were doing installations overseas.

[TimO]

A cursory search suggests that some DeWalt products are OK, but it does seem a bit random. Bosch on the other hand, fairly universally does well.

Most of my power tools are either Bosch or Parkside, so I cover the two extremes, and I'm fairly sure I've never owned anything more expensive from DeWalt than drill bits, so don't really have much of an opinion about them.

[fruitcake]

AIUI Dewalt was primarily  a woodworking tool firm  (or it grew from a woodworking tool firm). I guess their designs were focussed on that material and their customers were mainly working with wood. That is a simplification, but perhaps there's something in it.

Nonetheless the carpenter/joiner tradesman we know uses Makita which he considers better for joinery. Makita tools I've seen in shops are the more expensive of the brands.

Bosch was always an engineering firm across multiple sectors, and is a wealthy corporation with huge resources for product development, so I'd expect their stuff to 'just work'.

In an age of battery power tools, each brand produce systems of tools that share a common proprietary battery, and so consumers will stick with one brand. (A strategy of non-compatibility with other brands is also used by DSLR camera manufacturers and bike component manufacturers.)

I have no brand loyalty.

[Kim]

That's less of a thing than it used to be, as you can get adaptors from one manufacturer's battery to another.  There's also some work going on to standardise batteries across the more niche manufacturers.  I suppose if you're in the business of making plaster stirrers there are only advantages to using the same batteries as $vacuum_pump_manufacturer and $glue_gun_manufacturer.

[Jurek]

DeWalt bought Elu.
They pushed yellow plastic through Elu's injection moulding tools, removed half of the windings from the motor, and replaced the 9v battery with an 18v one.
My 9v Elu cordless would knock spots off a DeWalt 18v equivalent.

[robgul]

DeWalt bought Elu.
They pushed yellow plastic through Elu's injection moulding tools, removed half of the windings from the motor, and replaced the 9v battery with an 18v one.
My 9v Elu cordless would knock spots off a DeWalt 18v equivalent.

. . . and Black & Decker owns de Walt from what I can see . . . .  not sure if that's good or bad?

[mrcharly-YHT]

Bosch blue is good.

Bosch green isn't much better than black and decker these days.

Old bosch green was decent.

[TimO]

That's less of a thing than it used to be, as you can get adaptors from one manufacturer's battery to another.  There's also some work going on to standardise batteries across the more niche manufacturers. ...

As you say, adapters are fairly easily available. The only attempt at standardisation I've seen, is the Cordless Alliance System (CAS), however at best I've barely heard of most of them. Metabo is about the only name that I'm sure I've seen before! As you say, many of them make relatively niche products; "GESIPA develops and manufactures blind rivets and nuts, as well as setting tools. ...".